Yesterday was intense for everyone. Some quick updates as of last night:
- A large amount of the sitemod team has stepped away from the project. Other comrades from the community have volunteered to pitch in and been modded.
- Some core devs also stepped away from the project. For the time being, you should not expect any further development of new features or bug fixes as we reassess our capacity.
- Main has been locked. No immediate plans to unlock.
- Registration is closed and will remain so for the time being.
We 100% understand and support everyone who left yesterday and are also looking forward to the next stage of Hexbear.
We're probably not going to be making any additional announcements or formal communication until after the weekend at the earliest. Thanks.
deleted by creator
I don't know. I think that a lot of burnout comes down to a need to DECREASE the amount of drama various key individuals have to be involved in.
In essence, the goal should be for decision makers and the incredibly important developers to be as separated from the emotional impact of decision making as humanly possible.
I'm sure there are various things that could improve the lives of users but the problem first and foremost seems to be that there's structural issues in the team that requires structural changes to address turnover problems with volunteers. The first and foremost issue there is to prioritise key team members and making sure turnover and burnout happens as little as possible with them. When they burnout things get really bad. That hurts the whole site, users included.
Emotional impact on key team members seems to be the most pressing issue at hand.
deleted by creator
The other side of this is user expectations. The site hasn't got limitless resources and the team isn't paid to work on it fulltime despite the fact being that they clearly are working on it fulltime.
User expectations need to be readdressed, probably with some change to site branding, in order to adequately communicate to users that this is a project, that it is developing. Good but likely to have various flaws and kinks to work out through further work. Other major project have the sense to use the "beta" tag for this, Hexbear probably needs to consider something like that in order to manage/communicate that people set their expectations at the appropriate level.
deleted by creator
Yes, admins I’m begging you, allow some back channel from union to admins for hasty/(presumed yeasty) bans/concerns, which is filtered through some judgement. Or to relay stuff back from mods to there. Right now it exists in hanging state, where people are lucky to receive some answers, so disappointment builds there without info (or get banned, which is bad)
deleted by creator
Well, yes, I mean faster response from this inbetweeny relay. Last time drama happened admin posts in union have gone like a lead ballon, if I remember correctly. So now union just exists with occasional bans, but otherwise silent treatment
deleted by creator
This.